Lucky Star OVA Non-Review: It Was Very Good

I can’t ENACT any of it? Crap.

Before getting into my short non-review of the first Lucky Star OVA (not hard to imagine there will be subsequent releases), I would first like to point out the above copyright reminder that was displayed after the live action Lucky Channel segment, which a fansub group kindly took the time to translate in order to incriminate themselves. So anyone who watched this using ANY METHOD other than through a legally acquired digital versatile disc (i.e. fansubs, raws, streaming media), you have violated the law…and so have I. If you want screenshots or an in-depth summary, look elsewhere.

Now, I wasn’t expecting a lot from the Original Visual Animation but I found it humorous throughout its 40 minute run time. Almost all of it pleased me satisfactorily: (1) a daily life look at Minami’s pooch, Cherry-chan, with some good POV shots; (2) the Hiiragi sisters, Konata, and Nanao-sensei taking on a online RPG together; (3) Kagami as a reluctant Cinderella with a surprise ending; (4) a volleyball match where Tsukasa on Misao’s team tries to beat her sister and her team; (5) the usual quartet gets lost in the woods on the way to a class campsite; (6) a strange story involving a pet shop, frogs, and dialogue reiterated through text cards à la silent film; (7) Anime Tenchou approaching Konata in the MMO – the stinker of the lot; and (8) Lucky Channel with Hiromi Kanno and Minoru Shiraishi sans animation on top of a roof. The background music composed by Satoru Kousaki was good as always and his involvement in fall title Kannagi may get me to sample that new series.

For those stalwart legal viewers out there, I would speculate this OVA coming stateside in summer 2009 after television series vol. 6 comes out in mid-March or early April. About possible pricing, this should not retail for more than 15 American dollars since mediocre Mave-chan came out at $10 with negligible extras and there will surely be on-disc bonus material on par with the regular Haruhi and Lucky Star releases, namely, behind the scenes production and special event footage.

UPDATE 10/13:
A few hours after the post went up, Fanboy.com‘s Michael Pinto made a comment (above) on Twitter that I heartily second – Cherry-chan needs more screen time! You should check out his site – he beat some of the technorati to a few new Japanese iPhone ads.